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Lack   /læk/   Listen
Lack

verb
(past & past part. lacked; pres. part. lacking)
1.
Be without.  Synonym: miss.  "There is something missing in my jewelry box!"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lack" Quotes from Famous Books



... retrace their steps over the mountains, owing to the weakened condition of the prisoners and the lack of food. Their only chance for self-preservation and a possible return to civilization lay in carrying out Gilmore's designs to build bamboo rafts and float down the river to the sea. This was done. In going over rapids and water-falls, many rafts ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey

... Community. Protest against dominance resulted, however, in divisions, and although cooperation in practical activities has done much to prepare the way for national understanding, the hostile forces of the world to-day lack the restraint which might have come from a united moral sentiment and ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts

... They came to anchor off Constantinople, and while there some attempts at negociation were renewed on shore. These negociations, however, were all rendered abortive, partly by the skill of the French envoy, Sebastiani; partly by the lack of ability in our ambassador, Mr. Arbuthnot; partly by the victories that Napoleon was gaining over the Austrians and Russians; and partly by the neutral ground which the Austrian envoy took, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... insuperable difficulty in case of war was the lack of a navy. A navy could not be built in a day, or a year or two years, were the resources of the Confederacy boundless. The ships of war now in the possession of the United States were of incalculable power in such a crisis. The South was cut in every quarter by navigable ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... again, though there was no malice behind their humor; it was merely that they found the lack of a language in common a mirth-provoking circumstance. Marietta, with a flash of black eyes, murmured something very kindly in Italian, as she shook out a linen sailor suit—the exact twin of the one that had gone to sea—and spread it on ...
— Jerry Junior • Jean Webster

... jealousy. She prayed. She lay for hours at night struggling with her sins. If Martin had been worthy, if he had shown love in return, but, from the bottom of her soul, as the days increased she despised him—despised him for his light heart, his care of worldly things, his utter lack of comprehension of their father, his scorn, even now but badly concealed, of all the sanctities ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... part of the world. Our friendship had dwindled to nothing, and I thought no more about him. Mrs. Butts never uttered one word of reproach to her husband. I cannot say that she loved him as she could have loved, but she had accepted him, and she said to herself that as perhaps it was through her lack of sympathy with him that he had strayed, it was her duty more and more to draw him to herself. She had a divine disposition, not infrequent amongst women, to seek in herself the reason for any wrong which was done ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... the knees of the gods. The House stood a fair chance, but the general opinion was that Buller's would win the Thirds; and Christy's, a house that was full of average players who were too slack to get their seconds, would pull off the Two Cock. At any rate, there would be no lack of excitement. There was always far more keenness shown about house matches than school matches, a fact which worried Buller immensely. He thought everything should be secondary to the ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... as soon as he was free, that he was not by any means out of the woods. He was still decidedly in the enemy's country, and getting out of it promised to be a difficult and a perilous task. He was handicapped by his lack of knowledge of the place and what little he did know was discouraging. He had proof that human enemies were not the only ones he had to fear. And the only way he knew that offered a chance of getting out offered, as well, the prospect of encountering the ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske

... Miss Blackwell from Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, then past 80 years of age, expressing her regret at not being able to attend the convention, closed: "It is not for lack of interest in our great cause or indifference to the dear western women with whom I was associated so many years ago and who, like myself, have grown gray in the work for women.... God bless you all and give you an ennobling ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... Science, too self-assertive, too fond of combat, too much at the mercy of my own emotions, too sensitive to praise and blame. I needed to sound yet more deeply the depths of human misery, to hear yet more loudly the moaning of "the great Orphan," Humanity, to feel yet more keenly the lack of wider knowledge and of clearer light if I were to give effective help to man, ere I could bow my pride to crave admittance as pupil to the School of Occultism, ere I could put aside my prejudices and study ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... are already being felt. Gamma radiation is flooding through the gaps; the quick-breeding viruses are mutating through half the world, faster than the Medical Art can control them, so that millions of us are sneezing and choking—and dying, too, for lack of antibiotics and proper care. Air travel is a perilous thing; just today, a stratosphere roc crashed head-on into a fragment of the sky and was killed with all its passengers. Worst of all, the Science of Magic suffers. Because the stars are fixed on ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey

... Atkinson's and Gran's accounts: the weather was probably exceptional from the persistency of the early winter blizzards. There was a great dearth of seal-meat, due to the ice blowing out from the North Bay and to the lack of ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... story in its essence is the story of heroic men battling, aided or frustrated by the superhuman. And in the fur trade era there was no dearth of battling men, and the elements left no lack of superhuman obstacles. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... yoke laid across the shoulders of the delinquent; a piece of wood came forward from this into which her hands were secured: above all stood two iron bars, to the first of which was fastened a little bell; to the other a long fox's tail, which hung down the lack of ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... told you everything there was about father yesterday," she said. "I 'm sure you can't lack of things to put in; why, father lived a hundred years—and longer, too, for he was a hundred years ...
— The New Minister's Great Opportunity - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin

... and his men were suffering great misery from the inclement weather, for the rainy season had set in, and for lack of proper food, such crabs and shell-fish as they could pick up along the shore being all that they had. Therefore the arrival of Tafur with two well-provisioned ships was greeted with rapture, and the only ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... Lindore," cried Lady Emily, as he entered, "for we are all heartily sick of one another. A snow-storm and a lack of company are things hard to be borne; it is only the expectancy of your arrival that has kept us alive these two days, and now pray don't let us ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... her pulse beating quickly. She felt intuitively that something was wrong; that here was revealed a phase of Walcott's personality which she in her innocence had not considered, had not even suspected. She knew that her father believed him to be a moral man, and hitherto she had regarded the lack of affinity between herself and him as due to a sort of mental disparity—a lack of affiliation in thought and taste. Now the conviction flashed upon her that the disparity was a moral one. She recalled the sense of loathing with which she instinctively shrank from his ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... Chapter beginning with—"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor,"—and ending with—"As it is written, He, that had gathered much, had nothing over; and he, that had gathered little, had no lack." ...
— Christian Devotedness • Anthony Norris Groves

... lack of food; but he mentally braced himself to perform the task, and Gus cried as he struck him a ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis

... in Eighteen Hundred Forty-six, Charles Stewart Parnell was born. In that year there was starvation in Ireland. Thousands died from lack of food, just as they died in that other English possession, India, in Nineteen Hundred One. Famished babes, sucking at the withered breasts of dying mothers, were common sights on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... must have been some disappointment in love, some thwarted ambition, or perhaps the lack of a dinner that put you in such ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... engrossing a pastime as Nick could have desired for the amusement of his charge on that sunny April morning, but he did his valiant best to keep her thoughts on the move. He compelled her to talk when she yearned to be silent, and again in a vague, disjointed fashion Olga wondered at his lack of penetration. Yet, since he was actually obtuse enough to misunderstand her preoccupation and to be even mildly hurt thereby, she exerted herself for his sake to respond intelligently to his remarks. So, with cheery indifference on his ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... It straight forgets thee what thou art, And ofttimes my adulterate heart Dallies with Pleasure, thy pale enemy. O, for the learned spirit without attaint That does not faint, But knows both how to have thee and to lack, And ventures many a spell, Unlawful but for them that love so well, To ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... common position, based like most of the foregoing, on lack of understanding. It assumes that Socialism requires a state of sublime unselfishness and mutual deference, in which all men are willing to work for nothing. But why assume this? It is no product of Socialism. Our socialistic public parks and libraries do ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... They can conceive of no goodness, of no spiritual exaltation beyond the horizon of their creed. Whoever differs with them upon what they are pleased to call "fundamental truths" is, in their opinion, a base and infamous man. To re-enact the tragedies of the Sixteenth Century, they lack only the power. Bigotry in all ages has been the same. Christianity simply transferred the brutality of the Colosseum to the Inquisition. For the murderous combat of the gladiators, the saints substituted the auto de fe. What has been called religion is, after all, but the ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... were always replaced by new ones and as to friends—why the jolly crowds that would make the house fairly ring with merry-making on name-days[1] and on similar festive occasions proved that there was no lack of them. That every one had a feeling of high esteem for us I could tell by the respectful greetings addressed to us ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... passions in maturer life as those helpless, inarticulate ones we burn in secret with, before our teens; surely we never love again so violently, desperately, consumedly. Anyhow, I went home terribly in love with Mercedes. And—do all children lack humour?—I picked out the prettiest young ladyish-looking mouse in my collection, cut off her moustaches, adopted her as my especial pet, and called her by the name of my ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... cessation of all investigation into the causal nexus of phenomena in the domain of life") but likewise his fanciful theory of heredity, utterly devoid as it is of any support from actual observation, bespeak an utter lack of qualities essential to a naturalist; and the manner in which he ignores his former pupil and his labors, because they proved embarrassing to him, is entirely unworthy of a man ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... attracted in the other direction by a laugh from Bela. It had anything but a merry sound, but their ears were not sharp enough to detect the lack. Bela's nostrils were dilated, and her lip oddly turned back. But ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the sun, Thy brooding scowl and murk—thy unloos'd hurricanes, Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness; Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears—a lack from all eternity in thy content, (Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee greatest—no less could make thee,) Thy lonely state—something thou ever seek'st and seek'st, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... Sau-ga-nash could find suitable for the venture, or he would never have chosen it for the use of a single man, as it was of a size to require the services of several paddles. Yet the thought meant much; for this very lack of water-craft was likely to render pursuit by the baffled savages impossible, if only once we got fairly away from ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... when, after dinner in the cool of the summer evening, we drove lack into town to see Julia for the last time before we met in church the next morning. There was an air of glad excitement pervading the house. Friends were running in, with gifts and pleasant words of congratulation. Julia herself had a peculiar ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... was never afraid of any lack of play hours in the Farrington family, and she enjoyed alike both her morning tasks and her ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells

... estimates necessarily are, we have no better to guide us in calculating the total amount of the population of the Moorish kingdom, or of the losses sustained by the copious emigrations, during the first fifteen years after the conquest; although there has been no lack of confident assertion, as to both, in later writers. The desideratum, in regard to Granada, will now probably not be supplied; the public offices in the kingdom of Aragon, if searched with the same industry as those in Castile, would doubtless afford the means for ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... were growing rough and red from dabbling in water, punching bread dough, handling the varied articles of food that go to make up a meal. Upon hands and forearms there stung continually certain small cuts and burns that lack of experience over a hot range inevitably inflicted upon her. Whereas time had promised to hang heavy on her hands, now an hour of idleness in the day became ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... she said distinctly, "will not reduce the number of the frontiers." Her manner blamed Helen for her own lack of self-control; but to this her stepchildren were accustomed, and Helen felt ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... been any lack of historic controversy respecting a thousand facts which have transpired since the press was in full activity? You forget, that, in the first place, neither the press, nor any thing else, can preserve any original documents. Time will not be inactive ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... eat! She was famished. Again and again she had to sit down by the wayside, she was so weak from lack ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot

... the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things, like the old Puritan. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less. Never let me and your mother wear one gray hair for any lack of duty ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... did not contain as much of gay encounter with Roberta as he had anticipated—but, somehow, as he afterwards looked back upon it, he could not feel that there had been any lack. He had fancied himself, in prospect, sitting beside her at the table, exchanging that pleasant, half-foolish badinage with which young men are wont to entertain girls who are their companions at dinners, both nearly oblivious of the rest of the company. But it turned ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... there was a lake, or rather a pond, from the middle of which rose a marble Triton, which perpetually spouted forth water from his shell. The villa itself was of generous dimensions, in that style which is so familiar to us in this country, with broad piazzas and wide porticoes, and no lack of statuary. Here Obed Chute had made himself quite at home, and confided to Lord Chetwynde the fact that he would prefer this to his house on the Hudson River if he could only see the Stars and Stripes floating from the Campanile ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... that this enumeration of the lack of variety of food and the poverty of their new homes, could not deter us from our determination to dine with them, almost ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... Dorcas smiled at him out of many thoughts. She could not have whispered them to herself perhaps; but they all concerned Newell and his daily lack. Clayton saw the pretty lifting of her red lip above her small white teeth, and, being a young man ready to leap at desired ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... closed behind her and Sir John Oxon returned to the table, for a while a sort of dulness fell upon the party. Not being of quick minds or sentiments, these country roisterers failed to understand the heavy cloud of spleen and lack of spirit they experienced, and as they filled their glasses and tossed off one bumper after another to cure it, they soon began again to laugh ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... When she lifted the lid, a burnt smell arose. Methodically she scraped and cleaned the pot, put things in order, and peeled and sliced the potatoes for next day's frying. And just as methodically she went to bed. Her lack of nervousness, her placidity, was abnormal, so abnormal that she closed her eyes and was almost immediately asleep. Nor did she awaken till the sunshine was streaming ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... which must be discussed whatever our wishes or preconceived resolves. The separation between you and Mr. Oliver Ostrander cannot be so absolute (since whatever your cause of complaint you are still his father and he your son) that you will allow his whole life's happiness to be destroyed for the lack of a few words ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... looked up, a trifle startled. Her young charge was more than a match for her in irony, but the elder lady did not lack for solid perseverance, ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... returned home, and settled once more to sleep. At last his supplies were exhausted, and he was forced to subsist almost entirely on the pith beneath the bark of the willows. The pond by the hedgerow was sealed with ice, and he suffered much from the lack of his customary food. Half-way between his sleeping chamber and its water-entrance, a floor of ice prevented ready access to the river; and, under this floor, a hollow, filled with air, was gradually formed as the river receded from the level it had reached ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... at one time powerfully attracted towards the Teuton cause. They are a nation wonderful in science, wonderful in warfare, with strong and admirable national characteristics. Yet they are going to lose this war through sheer lack of tact, for the want of that kindliness, that generosity of temperament, which exists and makes friends in nations as in individuals. The world for Germany, you know, and hell for her enemies!... But I am ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... harassing, nearly disgusting task; on which, however, depends life or death. This Year, he "expects to have 300,000 enemies upon him;" and "is, with his utmost effort, getting up 150,000 to set against them." Of business, in its many kinds, there can be no lack! In the intervals he also wrote considerably: one of his Pieces is a SERMON ON THE LAST JUDGMENT; handed to Reader De Catt, one evening:—to De Catt's surprise, and to ours; the Voiceless in a dark Friedrich trying ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... tired, and I fear that I shall lack strength for to-morrow." Oh, Linda, Linda! But, indeed, had you foreseen the future, you might have truly said that you would want ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope

... say, gleams out of the dark. They comfort me with the thought that the better part of me was not dead, but buried here with the worse. They point also to the truth, as I take it to be, that the lack of privacy is one of the most serious detriments of public-school life. I don't say that privacy is good for all boys, or that it is good for any unless they are provided with a pursuit. It is true that many boys ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... Their lack of incident, however, is not entirely as favourable a circumstance as that uneventfulness of national annals to which I have compared it; for, though "no news may be good news" in the case of a nation's history, it is by no means as certainly so in the case of a man's biography, ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... thought of the perils which I was about to encounter in that heathen country, and cried out in funny, broken English, "Oh, Mr. Kinney! [he could not say Kennan] who's a g'un to cook for ye, and ye can't get no potatusses?" as if the absence of a cook and the lack of potatoes were the summing up of all earthly privations. I assured him cheerfully that we could cook for ourselves and eat roots; but he shook his head, mournfully, as if he saw in prophetic vision the state of misery to which Siberian roots and our own ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... Miss Wardour, therefore can not have flattered myself. I may have offended by coming one moment too late with this packet. Miss Wardour is accustomed to unqualified obedience. If I fail in that it is not from lack of inclination, but—because I am just learning submission." He uttered the last words in a lower, softer tone, and fell back as he uttered them, laying his hand upon ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... used to hear my auntie en my mammy en my grandmammy talk bout what happen in dey day, but I never didn' live in slavery time. My mammy, she been broke her leg long time fore freedom come here en I remember she tell me often times, say, 'Julia, you didn' lack much of comin here a slavery child.' Honey, I mean she been in de family way right sharp fore ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... the breast. Of course I refer to the barn swallow. The cliff swallow seems less a child of the sky and sun, probably because its sheen and glow are less, and its shape and motions less arrowy. More varied in color, its hues yet lack the intensity, and its flight the swiftness, of those of its brother of the haylofts. The tree swallows and the bank swallows are pleasing, but they are much more local and restricted in their ranges than the barn-frequenters. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... worst enemy. That was wealth, comfort, quiet business, lack of big disturbances and of great sufferings. The English Church still succeeded in preventing all the misuses and abuses of life under such circumstances. This success can be appreciated only if the ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... Charlie and Mary, lived in the oldest part of Millsburgh, where the quiet streets are arched with great trees and the modest houses, if they seem to lack in modern smartness, more than make good the loss by their air of homelike comfort. The Martin cottage was built in the days before the success of Adam Ward and his new process had brought to Millsburgh the ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... thee (Heb 13:5,6). Secondly, we have an invitation to come to this faithful God for wisdom to assist and help. For after he had said, "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations—and let patience have her perfect work"; he adds, "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him" (James 1:2-5). Here is more than an invitation, here is a promise—it shall be given him; and all to show us what a faithful Creator we have committed our souls ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... opposition. Indeed, it met with the same sort of honest but ineffective resistance that attended the election of Stanton to the Speakership of the Lower House. And like the campaign against Stanton the opposition to Perkins got nowhere because of the lack of leadership, organization and plan of action on the ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... wartime. In downtown Los Angeles freightcars stood unloaded on their sidings, their consignees out of business and the warehouses glutted. The strain on local transportation, already enfeebled by a publicservice system designed for a city one twentieth its size and a complete lack of those facilities mandatory in every other large center of population, increased by the necessary rerouting around the affected area, threatened disruption of the entire organism and the further disintegration ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... his lips no wordy protestation such as formal lovers use. No eloquence was his, nor did he suffer from the lack of it. He simply enfolded her ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... influences into which they may be thrown. This was probably the case even where that influence tended to degrade him from the plane he would have occupied, if left to himself. His spiritual life seemed to lack that vigor and buoyancy so infinitely important to contemplative men. He appeared to be ever yearning for something which should add robustness to his convictions. After a pause of some moments, Clifton ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... battle itself, was skillfully planned on the part of the savages. They must have known that the militiamen were in the vanguard and would cross the Maumee first. They rightly calculated that the impetuosity of the Kentuckians and their lack of discipline, would lead them at once into a headlong charge. This would make the destruction of the regulars comparatively easy and lead to the demoralization of the whole detachment. A plan so well designed as ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... body, which no activeness did lack, Now 's laid aside like an old almanack;— But for the present 's only out of date, 'Twill have at length a far more active state. Yea, though with dust thy body soiled be, Yet at the resurrection ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... always thinking of the pleasure of others. Now about the football game. Bring your girls along and I'll do my best to give them a good time, although I'm generally anything but a success with new girls. However, Hippy makes up for what I lack. He can entertain a regiment of them, and not even exert himself. Now I must leave you, for I have a very important engagement ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower

... as indiscreet as he might, he could not greatly lower her, as long as she herself was prudent. It was thus that Polly argued with herself. She knew her own value, and was not afraid that she should ever lack a lover when she wanted to find a husband. Of course it was not a nice thing to be thrown at a man's head, as her father was constantly throwing her at the head of young Newton; but such a man as she would give herself to at last would understand ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... young womanhood, and that her own interests demanded that she should go out into the world of which he had told her so much; that she should meet those of her own sex and learn the mysteries of her own being. The affection of her friends could not make up for this lack. It cost the honest fellow many a pang when he thought of this, but his consolation lay in the inevitable conclusion that nothing could be done until the return of her parent or until his ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... making compounds from these substances, that they mix and apply them in such a manner that they take effect at once, or at a set time—long or short, as they wish, even after a year. Many persons usually die wretchedly by these means—especially Spaniards, who lack foresight, and who are tactless and hated because of the ill-treatment that they inflict upon the natives with whom they deal, either in the collection of their tributes, or in other matters in which they employ them, without there being any remedy for it. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... seemed cold and lacking in melodic spontaneity; to Brahms, on the other hand, Tchaikowsky seemed superficial, sensational. The gist of the matter is that Brahms was a Teuton and wrote with characteristic Teutonic reserve and dignity. Tchaikowsky, being a Slav, wrote with the impassioned lack of restraint and volatility of mood associated with that people. How could it be otherwise? Each was a genuine artist, expressing his natural feelings with clearness and conviction; and each should be respected for what he did: not one at the expense of the other. In Brahms, however, the question ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... troublesome sorrows and worries, on which I suffer violently. I lost all my fortune, and I am ruined by Russia. I am here at present without means and dental practice, and my restaurant is impeded with lack of a few frivolous pounds. I do not know really what to do in my actual very disgraceful mischief. I heard the people saying Your propitious magnanimous beneficent charities are everywhere exceedingly well renowned ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... never acknowledged as chiefs, nor have they anything to say in the council. A chief would be deposed for any conduct causing general disgust or dissatisfaction, such as incest (marrying within his gens) or lack of generosity. Though crime in the abstract would not tend to create dissatisfaction with a chief, yet if he murdered, without sufficient cause, one whose kindred were numerous, a fight between the two bodies of kindred would ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey

... expend compassion on a man, as if he were a beggar, who has it in his power to satisfy by just and honest means his every need? (19) Surely it would be more appropriate to call that man a wretched starveling beggar rather, who through lack of means is driven to live by ugly shifts ...
— Hiero • Xenophon

... sister two years younger. There will be no lack of suitors for their hands, for although the family is not politically powerful, as it used to be, their wealth would cause them to be gladly received in our very ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty

... amusements; and grog was temperately distributed, together with bread, butter, and cheese. The best dinner their circumstances could afford was served up at midday. At sunset the colors were lowered, with another discharge of artillery. The night was spent in dancing; and, though there was a lack of female partners to excite their gallantry, the voyageurs kept up the ball with true French spirit, until three o'clock in the morning. So passed the new year festival of 1812 at the infant ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... not lack material, if only one were capable of the art of fiction. The genesis of novels and stories is a topic little studied, but I am inclined to believe that, like the pearls in the mussels of the river, fiction is a beautiful disease of the brain. Something, an incident or an experience, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... had the bridge forthwith broken down, and De Montmorency was stopped on the borders of the Ticino. In spite of the losses of its garrison in assaults and sorties, and in spite of the sufferings of the inhabitants from famine and from lack of resources of all sorts, Pavia continued to hold out. There was a want of wood as well as of bread; and they knocked the houses to pieces for fuel. Antony de Leyva caused to be melted down the vessels of the churches ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... his lack of interest in the talk, Darrin rolled over on his side, turning his gaze away from the other boys. In another minute Dave's eyes were closed, his lips open and his breath ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock

... one hundred and forty years to civilize it, but, alas, with only moderate success. Prosperous and happy even while sniping in their fox-hunting or canvas-back-duck clothes, these people feel somewhat soothed for their lack of ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... bring with you into the People's House a freshness and sweet savour which our citizens lack mightily. I would fain merit your esteem, heedless of those pursy fellows from hulks and warehouses, with one ear lappeted by the pen behind it, and the other an heirloom, as Charles would have had it, in Laud's Star-chamber. Oh, they are proud and bloody men! My heart melts; but, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... have been like Sheep, to Bite and devour one another. . . . Again, Do our Old People, any of them Go Out from the Institutions of God, Swarming into New Settlements, where they and their Untaught Families are like to Perish for Lack of Vision? They that have done so, heretofore, have to their Cost found, that they were got unto the Wrong side of the Hedge, in their doing so. Think, here Should this be done any more? We read of Balaam, in Num. 22, 23. He ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... own hearts? For these ye show us; and we less than these Have not wherewith to live as all these things Which all their lives fare after their own kind As who doth well rejoicing; but we ill, Weeping or laughing, we whom eyesight fails, Knowledge and light efface and perfect heart, And hands we lack, and wit; and all our days Sin, and have hunger, and die infatuated. For madness have ye given us and not health, And sins whereof we know not; and for these Death, and sudden destruction unaware. What shall we say now? what thing comes ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... no special technical training, except that which he received through his own efforts, and the incessant practice of the lyric art in provincial companies. A splendid musical intelligence, however, repaired the lack of early teaching, though, perhaps, a voice less perfect in itself would have fared badly through such desultory experiences. Like so many of the great singers of the modern school, Rubini first gained his reputation in the operas of Bellini and Donizetti, and many of the tenor parts of these ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... enemies. At the same time reform for a lower tariff, with which cause he had boldly identified himself, was marked anew as a main article of the Democratic creed. The nomination of Allen G. Thurman for Vice-President brought to the ticket what its head seemed to lack—popularity among the people of the West—and did much to hearten all such Democrats as insisted upon voting a ticket free from ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... vegetables to vary the ship's fare, or in the English Consul seeing his countrymen to their boat. But the Moorish guard had grown suspicious, as men are likely to do who know that their lives will certainly pay for any lack of vigilance. And so the sharp eyes that watched the English tars preparing to embark noticed some rather unusual movements amongst the cabbages that were being carried so carefully; and when a dismal howl arose from under the green stuff and a little ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... There was no lack of conversation that evening in that Lisbon cottage. All loved Luise; and she, in the midst of so many artless tokens of affection and of triumph at her return, forgot all the morbid fancies that had given rise to her dream, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... should it happen that the forces I expect from Europe should fail to come to hand in due time, these adventurers will serve a good purpose. But I have no fear for the want of followers. Europe is at the present moment overcrowded with people who lack employment: any enterprise will be welcome to them; and a leader in any part of the world needs only to speak the word for crowds to enrol themselves ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... to her mother; and the reply was a look which eloquently expressed Mrs. Warricombe's lack of ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... Lack of wine probably led to the suspension of a custom which had prevailed on the Terra Nova, namely, the drinking of the old toast of Saturday night, "Sweethearts and wives; may our sweethearts become our wives, and ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... Roman Catholics. He had uncovered himself for a few moments before the statue of Queen Anne, in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, under the firm impression that it was a figure of the Virgin Mary. He was somewhat surprised at the lack of deference shown to the figure by the people bustling by. He did not understand that their one essential historical principle, the one law truly graven on their hearts, was the great and comforting statement ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... term used is alopogan, which means "she who covers her face." For lack of a better designation we shall call her a medium. See ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole

... little more lonely we creep, A little more care in our faces, The wrinkles a little more deep. And we stagger, ah, God, how we stagger As we lift the old load to our back! A little more lonely to carry Because of the comrade we lack. ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various

... foot and their allies Came palely panting by the Brussels way, And, swiftly stationed, checked their counter-braves. Ney, vexed by lack of like auxiliaries, Bade then the columned cuirassiers to charge In all their edged array of weaponcraft. Yea; thrust replied to thrust, and fire to fire; The English broke, till Picton prompt to prop them Sprang with fresh foot-folk from ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... direction of the padres, from Salsperde Creek, three miles away. But other misfortunes were in store for these unlucky people. During a drought in the winter of 1816-1817, hundreds of sheep perished for lack of feed, and in 1818 nearly all the neophytes' houses were destroyed ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... Cardinal Wolsey endeavored to terrify the citizens of London into the general loan exacted in 1525, and told them plainly, that "it were better that some should suffer indigence than that the king at this time should lack and therefore beware and resist not, nor ruffle not in this case, for it may fortune to cost some people their heads." Such was the style employed by this king and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... ranch, and waited, until at six o'clock everything was ready. Here we sent back the two yokes of animals which we had brought from Jiquipilas, and secured a fine, strong beast to make up our number, and started. We did not stop to grease the wheels, for lack of time. It was dark, and the first part of the journey was uncertain and difficult; coming out on to the Llano Grande, we found things easy, though here and there were stony places, where we jolted fearfully. ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... the white man can only direct it. Besides, where life is fairly easy, men will not readily come forward to labour. Either the inducement offered must be adequate, or some form of compulsory enlistment must be adopted. The Belgian officials, in the plentiful lack of funds that has always clogged their State, have tried compulsion, generally through the native chiefs. These are induced, by the offer of cotton cloth or bright-coloured handkerchiefs, to supply men from the tribe. If the labourers are not forthcoming, the chief is ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... The lack of pressure by black servicemen and civil rights advocates lent itself to official procrastination. Civil rights organizations, preoccupied with racial unrest throughout the nation and anxious for the passage of new civil rights legislation, seemed ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... lack of anything to apprehend about the lad for the present, the professor turned to Mr Burne, whom he had been helping for some hours to cling to the boat, and had sustained with a few whispered words of encouragement in ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... to the desert and the river. It does not matter where we walk; the question is, How? We cannot know step by step the way he went. Let us walk by faith, as he walked. If our spirit is like his, we shall not lack for guidance when we come to the crossing of the ways." And so they fared on. But many doubted their own promptings. "Tell me, am I right?" each one asked of his neighbor; and his neighbor asked it again of him. And those who were ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan

... adequate to the suspense. But, I have treated this angle of secret-keeping in "preparation versus result," so I shall now direct your attention to the other side of the problem of dramatic frankness—which may be the cause of the lack of punch: ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Pen and I, waited upon the Duke of York in his chamber, to give him an account of the condition of the Navy for lack of money, and how our own very bills are offered upon the Exchange, to be sold at 20 in the 100 loss. He is much troubled at it, and will speak to the King and Council of it this morning. So I went to my Lady's and dined with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... With winter's lack, The wind blows cold Round field and fold; All folk are within, And but weaving they win. Where from finger to finger the shuttle flies fast, And the eyes of the singer look fain on the cast, As he singeth the story ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris

... abroad, dear Peter! There happens to have been the most extraordinary lack of openings—I never saw anything like it—for a year. They've had their hand on him, keeping him all ready. I daresay ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... I. "Why, 'tis red," quo' she. "Ay," quoth I, "but what a red! how brown! how glossy! most hair is not worth a straw to us painters; thine the artist's very hue. But thy violet eyes, which smack of earth, being now languid for lack of one Gerard, now full of fire in hopes of the same Gerard, these will I lift to heaven in fixed and holy meditation, and thy nose, which doth already somewhat aspire that way (though not so piously as Reicht's), will I debase a trifle, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... Jew, on the move again," she repeated. "But where to move to, that is the question. It's funny what a difference money makes"—her eyebrows went up—"or rather, lack of it. I've never considered that ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... Gothic churches have no unity of style, owing to the long period covered during their building. From a purely architectural point of view, they lack perhaps the purity of some of their French and German rivals, but they are all the more interesting to the historian and bring him into close contact with the transformation of mind and manners from the Middle Ages ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... multiplicity of good works, and of trusting to them for salvation, it may seem strange for us to urge their necessity. But in speaking of those who lack the beautiful oneness in character and conduct which distinguished Jesus, we would not omit many who, having been educated in the full belief of the doctrine of "justification by faith," carry it to such an extent as to despise good works, and almost to look upon them as heretical. ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... exception of Canning and Castlereagh, of narrow views and poor capacity, headed by the Duke of Portland, who, in 1793, had given his name to the section of the Whig party which joined Pitt. The foreign policy of the new Cabinet, which concealed its total lack of all other statesmanship, returned to the lines laid down by Pitt in 1805. Negotiations were opened with Russia for the despatch of an English army to the Baltic; arms and money were promised to the Prussian King. For a moment it seemed as if the Powers ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... desirable to consider a little the difficulties in the way of writing history. We all know the difficulty of getting at the truth of a matter which happened yesterday, and about which we can examine the living actors upon oath. But in history the most significant things may lack the most important part of their evidence. The people who were making history were not thinking of the convenience of future writers of history. Often the historian must contrive to get his insight into matters from ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps

... That Greeks might ne'er to haughty victors bow, Nor thraldom's yoke, nor dire oppression know, They, fought, they bled, and on their country's breast (Such was the doom of Heaven) these warriors rest: Gods never lack success, nor strive in vain, But man must suffer what the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... I moved about. "Never mind, Walter," he said. "I know how you feel on a first trip. One minute you are choking from lack of oxygen, then in another part of the boat you are exhilarated by too much of it. Still," he winked, "don't forget that ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... within arm's reach, and I have accomplished—some three or four little books! And yet—why, Ashtaroth's Lackey, now—Yes, by God! it is perfected speech such as few other men have ever written. I know it, and I do not care at all even though you piteous dullards should always lack the wit to recognise and revere perfected speech when it confronts you. But presently I die! and there is nothing left of me save the inefficient testimony of those three or four ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... remember, my dear friend; that exceedingly cold winter's night, when, for lack of other book-entertainment, we took it into our heads to have a rummage among the Scriptores Historiae Normannorum of DUCHESNE?—and finding therein many pages occupied by Gulielmus Gemeticensis, we bethought ourselves ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... of the sybil was too great in Venice to allow her wild predictions to be laughed at. Besides, our young Venetians—Nicolo no less than Giovanni, in spite of what the woman had spoken touching his lack of enthusiasm—were both aroused and eagerly excited by her speech. Her person dilated as she spoke—her voice seemed to come up from a fearful depth, and went thrillingly deep into the souls of the hearers. They were carried from their feet by her predictions. They ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... doubtfully. Moreover, Masouda, being a person of no account except for her beauty, and a heretic, was allowed to go where she would and to speak with whom she wished. So, as she wished to speak often with Godwin, they did not lack for ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... the Light Blues may be entirely attributed to the unfortunate absence of the crack International, Godfrey Staunton, whose want was felt at every instant of the game. The lack of combination in the three-quarter line and their weakness both in attack and defence more than neutralized the efforts of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... God. You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not be dishonest. Honor your father and mother.'" He said to him, "Master, I have kept all these commands from my youth." Looking upon him, Jesus loved him and said, "One thing you lack; go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come with me." But when the man heard this, he looked sad, and he went away in sorrow, for he had great wealth. Then Jesus looked ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman

... canal. But on this night the still surface was destined to be ruffled—on this night, so strange, so extraordinary an adventure was destined to happen to him, that it actually compensated, in five brief hours, for all the lack of excitement in ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... Dennis." John Steele leaned back; the dying embers revealed a haggard face; his eyes half closed as if from lack of sleep but immediately opened again. "You spoke of expecting me; how," he stretched out his legs, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... the dead are not universal in Al-Islam; but when they are recited they lack the "sijdah" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... Mortality," Frank Osbaldistone is on the political side taken by Scott's judgment, not by his emotions. To make Di Vernon convert him to Jacobitism would have been to repeat the story of Waverley. Still, he would have been more sympathetic if he had been converted. He certainly does not lack spirit, as a sportsman, or "on an occasion," as Sir William Hope says in "The Scots' Fencing Master," when he encounters Rashleigh in the college gardens. Frank, in short, is all that a hero should be, and is glorified ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott



Words linked to "Lack" :   dearth, exclude, need, deficit, have, shortness, demand, miss, shortage, mineral deficiency, tightness, stringency, absence, famine



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